Vox

Vox is a musical equipment manufacturer which is most famous for making the Vox AC30 guitar amplifier, the Vox Continental electric organ, and a series of innovative but commercially unsuccessful electric guitars and bass guitars. Founded in Dartford, Kent, England, Vox has been owned by the Japanese electronics firm Korg since 1992.

Back in the early 1960s, one amp almost single-handedly helped power the so-called British Invasion of the US. That amp was the Vox AC30, fitted with Celestion Blue Alnico speakers and later including Vox's Top Boost circuitry. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Yardbirds all played Vox AC30 combos and the sound from this valve-driven amp came to define the British beat boom.

The Beatles became synonymous with Vox amps and the company prospered, but by the end of the decade Marshall had overtaken Vox as the dominant British amp manufacturer, despite the likes of Rory Gallagher and Brian May flying the flag for Vox. Two decades of decline were reversed in 1992, when Korg took over ownership of Vox Amplification Ltd and created a faithful reissue version of the Vox AC30. Recent developments have seen successes in the modelling arena with the company's Valvetronix amps and the company once again manufactures original electric guitar designs.